Curated By: Shankhyaneel Sarkar
Last Updated: October 31, 2023, 10:57 IST
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
An Israeli soldier in a tank participates in a military drill near Israel’s border with Lebanon in northern Israel. (Image: Reuters)
The car was allegedly driven by civilians and the entire incident was captured by two freelance journalists sat in another car, right behind the one that faced Israeli tank fire.
An Israeli army tank allegedly fired on a car on the outskirts of Gaza City on Monday , eyewitnesses told news agencies, as calls to protect civilians in Gaza intensified. The incident occurred in the Salah Al Deen road and freelance photographer Bashar Talib told news agencies that he witnessed the entire incident.
“He was close to the tank and the bulldozer. He stopped his car to go back, but he was targeted before driving,” Talib said, according to a report by NBC, referring to the white car which was allegedly struck by the tank.
The moment of #Israeli targeting a car and the martyrdom of its passengers on Salah al-Din Street during the incursion of Israeli occupation tanks this morning.لحظة استهداف سيارة واستشهــاد ركابها في شارع صلاح الدين خلال توغل دبابات الاحتلال صباح اليوم.#Gaza_under_attack… pic.twitter.com/sCVHJ2xBp0
— State of Palestine – MFA (@pmofa) October 30, 2023
The video of the incident was shot by his colleague Youssef Al-Saifi, a local journalist. In the video, a white car is seen moving ahead of the car they are travelling in. The white car suddenly slows down and starts to turn around.
Within a few moments of it turning away in the opposite direction, a tank fires a round that hits its back end and black smoke erupts. ““The man is dead, a whole family,” Talib and Al-Saifi scream together.
The journalists also told the news outlet that a bus carrying women and children was moving straight toward the white car and the tank and calls asking them to turn back failed as they were travelling too fast.
“God spared our lives. If there was no car driving in front of us, we would be targeted,” Talib said, adding that he and his colleague were grateful to be alive and unhurt.
News18 could not independently verify the authenticity of their claim and of the video. The video was later shared by the Palestinian foreign ministry, which claimed the passengers died and called them ‘martyrs’.
The Israel-Hamas war has entered its fourth week and aid agencies have warned that Palestinian civilians are in dire need of fuel, food and clean water because Gaza’s infrastructure has reached a point of near collapse.
During the weekend, crowds broke into four UN facilities and took food supplies, leading the UN to say that these are signs that civil order was starting to break down.
